Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes checks the ball after the Mariners' Chris Taylor scores during their Cactus League game Friday at Camelback Ranch. KEVIN SULLIVAN, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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The Dodgers' Howie Kendrick is welcomed into the dugout after scoring on a Juan Uribe single during their Cactus League game against the Seattle Mariners Friday at Camelback Ranch. KEVIN SULLIVAN, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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The Dodgers' Adrian Gonzalez tracks down a hit against the Seattle Mariners during their Cactus League game Friday at Camelback Ranch. KEVIN SULLIVAN, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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The Dodgers' Juan Uribe hits an RBI single against the Seattle Mariners during their Cactus League game Friday at Camelback Ranch. KEVIN SULLIVAN, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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The Dodgers' Howie Kendrick can't reach this single by the Mariners' Willie Bloomquist during their Cactus League game Friday at Camelback Ranch. KEVIN SULLIVAN, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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The Dodgers' Austin Barnes hits a sacrifice fly against the Seattle Mariners during their Cactus League game Friday at Camelback Ranch. KEVIN SULLIVAN, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

DODGERS 7, MARINERS 4

The game: One Dodgers split-squad took advantage of sloppy fielding by the Seattle Mariners to score five unearned runs in a 7-4 victory at Camelback Ranch on Friday afternoon.

Pitching report: Vying for spots in the bullpen, David Huff, David Aardsma and Paco Rodriguez combined on four scoreless innings. But Mariners shortstop Chris Taylor made life rough for two pitchers likely to be in that bullpen. He had an RBI triple off Dustin McGowan and a two-run home run off J.P. Howell.

Hitting report: O'Koyea Dickson hit his second home run of the spring, a solo shot to the opposite field. Jimmy Rollins, Yasmani Grandal and Adrian Gonzalez had singles and Howie Kendrick a double.

The game: Four Dodgers combined for six no-hit innings as a split-squad beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 10-1, in Maryvale on Friday afternoon.

Pitching report: Top prospect Julio Urias struggled with his control in his first appearance of the spring. He walked three and threw a wild pitch in 12/3 innings and was pulled when he reached his pitch limit. Urias did strike out two batters, picked off a runner and didn't allow a ball to be hit out of the infield. The Brewers didn't get a hit off Zach Lee, Urias, Yimi Garcia and Chris Reed until former Dodger Elian Herrera led off the seventh with a single.

Hitting report: Three Dodgers hit home runs – A.J. Ellis (three-run), Alex Guerrero (two-run) and Darnell Sweeney (solo). Joc Pederson had two more hits and is now batting .714 (5 for 7) with two doubles. Guerrero also is 5 for 7 after playing third base Friday. He is expected to play left field Saturday.

Up next: The Dodgers play the Cleveland Indians in Goodyear on Saturday. RHP Mike Bolsinger is scheduled to pitch for the Dodgers and reigning AL Cy Young winner RHP Corey Kluber of the Indians. Game time is 12:05 p.m.

BILL PLUNKETT

GLENDALE, Ariz. – There are some things that can make even the smartest guys in the room feel not so smart.

“It’s incredibly difficult,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said of the biggest challenge he faces in assembling a roster every year. “At the end of spring training each and every year when people ask me what I’m most concerned about, my answer is ‘The bullpen.’ It’s extremely volatile by nature and it’s something that is really difficult to project.”

Relievers, more than any other position, embody the warning that past performance is no guarantee of future success – confounding decision-makers like those with which Friedman has populated the Dodgers’ front office who rely on the most sophisticated metrics and analysis to essentially predict future success.

“Most guys – what they did in the previous year, what they did in the previous few years, is pretty indicative of what they’ll do in the next year,” Friedman said. “Relievers, that’s certainly not the case. And so, it’s about a lot of different factors we try and look at to try and figure out who we want to bet on to have the best year that year.”

Reliable relievers emerge from a variety of sources – converted (usually meaning, failed) starters, raise-your-own young pitchers, revitalized veterans. The key is “putting ourselves in position to capture those upside successes,” Friedman said.

“I promise you at the end of the year there are going to be a couple guys that have tremendous years that aren’t necessarily on the radar right this second,” he said. “Now it’s incumbent upon us to figure it out, pick the right seven guys, maintain as much depth as we can to put ourselves in a position where we wake up in the middle of the year and our bullpen is a strength and we’re getting key contributions from people we might not be able to pinpoint right now.”

Friedman and GM Farhan Zaidi have put together quite a collection this spring, trying to turn the Dodgers’ Achilles’ heel from 2014 into a strength. There are 15 pitchers – that’s right, 15 – in camp this spring vying for one of seven spots in the season-opening bullpen.

There are the holdovers (J.P. Howell and Brandon League plus Kenley Jansen, who will start the season on the DL). There are imports (Joel Peralta, Chris Hatcher, Juan Nicasio and Adam Liberatore, all acquired in trades). There are some homegrown candidates (Pedro Baez, Yimi Garcia, Paco Rodriguez and Daniel Coulombe). And there are veterans on whom Friedman and Zaidi are rolling the dice (Dustin McGowan, David Aardsma, Mike Adams and Sergio Santos).

“We feel like we’re going to have a lot of competition in that bullpen,” Manager Don Mattingly said early in camp. “There are a lot of good arms. Andrew and I were talking the other day – there are going to be some disappointed guys in Triple-A.”

If the Dodgers are going to catch lightning in a bottle, they have assembled a diverse group of bottles. The variety in that group – hard throwers who can get strikeouts, sinkerballers who can get ground balls – is another part of the build-a-bullpen philosophy, Zaidi said.

“I’ve seen so many different types of guys have success,” Zaidi said. “Guys that throw hard, guys that throw sidearm 86 mph. I just think in some sense it’s about building a bullpen of guys who have success from a performance standpoint and have functionality from a managerial standpoint. So when Don has a certain situation where he needs to get a certain type of hitter out or needs to get through a certain part of the game, he has a good option.

“We have to create a bullpen that gives the manager options to navigate through those last few innings. There’s no one type of guy that fills that role.”

That approach worked for Friedman in Tampa, where cost constraints made investing heavily in any reliever an unwise use of his limited resources. The Rays bullpen was the worst in baseball during Friedman’s first two seasons as their GM. Their relievers ranked dead last in WHIP and opposing batting average each season. In the next seven seasons, however, Rays relievers had one of the five lowest batting averages against five times (including the lowest in baseball twice) and one of the five lowest WHIPs four times – all of this while depending often on reclamation projects (each in their own way) such as Fernando Rodney, Troy Percival, Grant Balfour and Kyle Farnsworth.

“He just gets guys that probably some other teams don’t want,” Peralta said. “He gets information. He sees something that he can use, and then he lets you compete. It happened with me. The thing is he gives confidence to players when he tells you to just go out and do what you can do.”

Some of the credit goes to Joe Maddon, who emerged as one of the best managers in baseball – and one of the best handlers of a bullpen – after Friedman hired him in 2006. How much credit is hard to determine, Friedman and Maddon having become so intertwined during nine years together in Tampa.

“He (Friedman) always put together a bullpen where every guy was ready to take the ball every day in any situation. Not every bullpen is like that,” said Howell, who spent 2006-12 with the Rays. “Obviously, there’s a strategic part and that was Joe. He told me once he’d go over every possible situation before each game and think how he’d handle it. ‘If we’re up 10 runs, I’m going to this guy. If we’re down three in the fifth inning, this guy. If we’re tied and the middle of their lineup is coming up, this guy.’ Whatever.

“There were no roles except closer. You had to be ready from the fifth inning on. That’s the way it should be.”

If that becomes the Dodgers’ approach this year, it will put a good deal of pressure on Mattingly to make the right choices when he waves to the bullpen. A year ago, the Dodgers left spring training thinking they would have a fairly structured bullpen – “That kind of changed,” Mattingly said in an understatement this spring. As the season progressed and the choices were not obvious, it did not always go so well, particularly in the playoffs.

“You watch Kansas City and some teams, the way they were able to do it (in 2014) – you’d love to be able to have established roles,” Mattingly said. “But some times you don’t have that personnel. I think your personnel tells you what to do. Last year at the end of the year, our personnel wasn’t really working out to where you could say, ‘This is his inning. This is his inning.’

“The year before we had that. We went into the playoffs and we knew who was going to pitch the eighth and we knew who was going to pitch the ninth. Our personnel will tell us how we end up doing it.”

NOTES

Right-hander Zack Greinke threw 36 pitches in two simulated innings of live batting practice. It was Greinke’s first time throwing to hitters this spring after receiving a lubricating injection in his elbow at the start of training camp. He is scheduled to make his first Cactus League start Wednesday. …

Gilberto Suarez was sentenced to one month in prison and five months house arrest for violating U.S. immigration laws while helping Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig escape from Cuba in 2012. The Florida businessman was found guilty of driving Puig from Mexico City to the Texas border, where he crossed into the United States without immigration papers. He was paid $2.5 million when Puig signed a seven-year, $42 million contract with the Dodgers.

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